Talk:François-René de Chateaubriand

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Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to François-René de Chateaubriand. --Antiquary 11:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

• Are you angry? Look at the child who has erred, he suspects no trouble, he dreams of no harm; you will borrow something of that innocence, you will feel appeased.

• As long as the heart preserves desire, the mind preserves illusions.

• Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

• Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man.

• Christianity, which is always true to the heart, knows no abstract virtues, but virtues resulting from our wants, and useful to all.

• Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

• It is necessary to repent for years in order to efface a fault in the eyes of men; a single tear suffices with God.

• Justice is the bread of the nation, it is always hungry for it.

• Let us not disdain glory too much — nothing is finer except virtue. The height of happiness would be to unite both in this life.

• Music is the child of prayer, the companion of religion.

• Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

• Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity..

• Something you consider bad may bring out your child's talents; something you consider good may stifle them.

• The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.

• There is nothing more servile, despicable, cowardly and narrow-minded than a terrorist.

• Time spent with cats is never wasted.

• We can prostrate ourselves in the dust when we have committed a fault, but it is not best to remain there.

• We must not always try to plumb the depths of the human heart; the truths it contains are among those that are best seen in half-light or in perspective.

• Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.

Translation needed

• Je ne reconnaîtrai de souverain que celui qui alluma la flamme des soleils et qui d'un seul coup de sa main fit rouler tous les mondes.
  • Voyage en Amérique